Agatha Christie's Marple: Caribbean Mystery (video)

In A Caribbean Mystery you play the role of James Bond. Did you audition for the role?

I never intended to play the part. In fact it's a slightly thankless task, as James Bond is basically required to drone on and on in the background while the major characters talk amongst themselves. My role is very small and it only required a one-day shoot so I wasn't out in Cape Town for long.

This is not the dynamic, all-action, bed-hopping Bond. He’s a nerdy American from the Audubon Society who likes birds, the feathered kind! When we did a read-through of the script before filming, however, when the part had not yet been cast, I read the lines and I must have done something right.

The director, Charlie Palmer, thought it would be quite a laugh for me to play the part, and add to the in-joke. I had to agree with him that having the author of the Young James Bond novels play James Bond in an Agatha Christie script, was quite funny, especially as it was the ornithologist not the secret agent… Interestingly, Agatha Christie wrote a short story in the 20s called ‘The Rajah’s Emerald’ in which the central character was called James Bond!